Not everyone has to agonize over choosing life priorities, and I think it's likely more and more will choose to skip mom-ism altogether,... maybe for economic reasons, and maybe because we'll have more talk about women asking themselves, "Do I really want to raise kids?". "If I love kids, would I rather free myself to work with lots of them in other settings?"

Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said it was better for children to have a parent at home. “To have one parent to stay closely connected and at home during those early years of education can be very very important,” he said. It’s not hard to imagine which parent he’s talking about.

Romney’s statement didn’t elicit much in the way of outrage, a sign that American women have one more hurdle to overcome on the way to equality: the sexism of mom-ism. It’s no longer enough that women love their children. To be a truly committed parent, women are expected to be mothers above all else—we’re “moms first.”

To make her point, Valenti must reject Romney's use of the sex-neutral word "parent." Why not take it seriously? What does she do when her standard template doesn't fit? Just force it on anyway. Why weren't American women outraged at the sexism of Romney's statement? Because it wasn't sexist! It was putting children first.

And let's get some respect for the men who take the role of at-home spouse in the single-earner family (or who modify their work life to be the parent spending the most time "closely connected and at home"). Valenti mentions fathers in only one paragraph:

Fathers are never expected to subsume their identity into parenthood the way that mothers are. If President Obama were to tell us that he is 'father-in-chief' first, America would balk. How could a man be an effective president if he put the needs of his children above the needs of his country?

Women aren't expected to subsume their identity into parenthood anymore either. It is a choice, and a woman who makes that choice is at least as likely to be disrespected as to be praised.

And maybe President Obama should have waited until his girls were older before he immersed himself in the overwhelming duties of running for and serving as President. For some reason he had to jump in when he did, despite his and his daughters' youth. We were just about to get the first woman President, so the time was ripe.

ADDED: Hillary Clinton would have been a better President. Where's the outrage about that?

"A woman who writes for the old commie rag, The Nation, doesn't want to have children?"

She is a mother. Here's the last 2 sentences of the article:

"When we tout ourselves mothers first, women give those who would enshrine their dehumanization more firepower and assure that their domestic work will only ever be paid in thanks, not in policy or power. Until that changes, I’m a mother second."

Amusing set of metaphors in the penultimate sentence, no? Even if you could picture a shrine composed of dehumanization, where would you see the "firepower" coming from?

If we set this bar any lower - and even hearing people say Romney will be better than Obama is hardly praise - even limbo champions will walk away in disgust.

The Farmer,

Hey Crack, are you against Romney?

What's it matter? Either he's that "nice" man from a church that's taught him what "right height" trees should be at in certain states, or he's a crazy member of a cult who thinks they've "solved" cold fusion,...but, darn it, they just can't duplicate it yet.

I'm just wondering about this man captured in a marriage and vasectomied because his wife does not want children.

What if she changes her mind? Does she go off and find another man? I guess they'd freeze his semen before he committed reproductive suicide.

But what if the marriage doesn't work out, and he's back out there again wanting another woman, he with the lifeless semen to offer. What if the other woman wants sex with the potential to create new life as nature/God intended? What if she believes that gives depth and meaning to sexual intercourse? He can't offer that.

I know you have a shot at getting a vasectomy reversed, but... that's a lot of cutting and sewing!

When we tout ourselves mothers first, women give those who would enshrine their dehumanization more firepower and assure that their domestic work will only ever be paid in thanks, not in policy or power. Until that changes, I’m a mother second.

A stupefyingly stupid sentence, full of brain dead assumptions.

People "tout" themselves as mothers?

Somebody is "enshrining their dehumanization?" Who in the hell might that be?

Payment seems to occupy the writer in some odd way. Maybe she should just become a whore, and get paid straight up.

I, also, would have been a better president. But, then, I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers and a better policy person than my policy people, so naturally, I'd be a better president than my president.

In my experience, it really is parenthood that those of the leftist persuasion devalue. They hold the same revulsion for men and women who stay home with their children.

My husband stayed home with our children. In retrospect, it was the best possible thing that could have happened to them. But he did have to take a lot of sneering from people - especially those in academia. For a little while in the beginning, I was the one who was home. We lived in a small, very liberal college town at the time. I got dissed a lot, too. (Not only for not working, but for having more than one kid! Amazing what people will say to you to your face.)

I never really thought about being a mother. I helped raise my little sisters, even got up the first night with the youngest sister. A year into my marriage I was slated to go to an nco school..and surprise! I was pregnant. Being a mother has been the most satisfying part of my life. Even better than expert marksman badges.

I find this odd-funny. I spent years working industry among other engineers - most of them men, and most of them dads.There were lots of long days and working Saturdays, sometimes Sundays. But when anything important was happening at home the attitude was always 'I'm a dad first. The company can go suck wind this time.'

MathMom: State does as the President dictates. Remember, Clinton and Panetta pushed to take out bin Laden over Obama's preferences. In this case, she just didn't win the behind the scenes fighting (or chose not to fight it.)

I lived in Saudi Arabia when the barracks in Riyadh were attacked, and the Khobar Tower explosion rocked my house. I remember Pres. Clinton insisting that those who did these attacks would be brought to justice. He said he was going to send the FBI! They were going to get to the bottom of it!

Never happened. I lived in fear on my compound, from the time of the Khobar Tower attacks until our family left SA, because there was a threat against the compound every single day from that day forward. Hillary Clinton knows what can happen when Islamists and explosives get together.

This is a fight she should have fought out loud in public if necessary. She is responsible, in my book.

If you can guarantee that Hillary would have been so deferential to the right-wing need to fear/respect her (the two reactions are identical for them), that they'd not have reacted with the disastrous Tea Party, then I could see her being a better president.

But it's amazing that anyone would compare her favorably to a guy they deride as a "cipher". If anyone's positions are opportunistic and power motivated, Hillary's are. I've never once heard her articulate a reasonable view devoid of her assumption of what it would do for own sense of power.

That's what Republicans admire about her. That's the reason Obama was the better choice. Honesty and reason matter.

"If you can guarantee that Hillary would have been so deferential to the right-wing need to fear/respect her (the two reactions are identical for them), that they'd not have reacted with the disastrous Tea Party, then I could see her being a better president."

-- I can guarantee you that Clinton would not have so mismanaged healthcare as to have angered a majority of the population into throwing her party to the curb in 2010. You know how I know? Because unlike Obama, Clinton learns her lessons and does her homework. She is completely aware of how her husband managed to triangulate during his presidency and would have sought to reach compromise positions like him.

She would not have said "I won," and then promptly seen her congressional support network destroyed like the supporting cast in a slasher movie.

Yes, she didn't have a long resume of experience. In theory, there ought to have been other people, much better qualified than she was. But the cursus honorum leading to the Presidency has been getting shorter every election, from Bush I (VP, Ambassador, CIA chief, Congressman), to Clinton (Governor of Arkansas, 10 yrs), to Bush II (Governor of Texas, 5 yrs), to Obama (Editor of the Harvard Law Review). At the least, she seriously outclassed Obama.

But her key qualification was a different type of experience: Hillarycare, and what came after. She tried to push through a massive rearrangement of the country's health care systems. It failed miserably. And she learned from it. Years later, when she joined the Senate, she was assiduous in cultivating social and working relationships across the aisle. And she earned the respect of her former opponents.

Women aren't expected to subsume their identity into parenthood anymore either. It is a choice, and a woman who makes that choice is at least as likely to be disrespected as to be praised.

Let's clarify: A woman who makes the choice to stay home with her child will at least likely to be disrespected by people like Valenti who devalue and scorn the Herculean task of being a SAHM. This woman continually reveals her ignorance and arrogance - typically at the same time.

Tea Party candidates were elected in 2010 with the express purpose of slowing or stopping Obama's tsunami of spending and borrowing.

They succeeded.

With economic stagnation as the predictable result.

I hope that Tea Party candidates are even more successful in the upcoming elections. Precisely what we need.

It's good to know that the guy spewing this dreck is the same one who at 10:52 was so enamored of his own sense of poverty to state that he's never been able to afford or enjoy a day of leisure in his life.

I call BS on the claim that fathers are never asked to identify as fathers first. in my culture, they most definitely are, and I've known many men who choose career tracks that allow them more time to spend with their children. But these men don't run the author's circles.

Domestic work???? Jack Valenti's daughter doing domestic work? Feminism has never been about anything but freeing upper class women from cultural restraints that were observed more in the breech than in practice. Fuck the unintended consequences, that's all the prole's lookout. Except, of course, for the African Americans, on whom they can commit cultural genocide. All this and much more under the cover of "empathy" embodied in the welfare state that provides for a bare subsistence-level existence.

The depth of self-justifying delusion and rationalization is breathtaking.

It's good to know that the guy spewing this dreck is the same one who at 10:52 was so enamored of his own sense of poverty to state that he's never been able to afford or enjoy a day of leisure in his life.

I love it when you resort to outright lying, Ritmo, which is the principle weapon in your bag of tricks.

I am a man of action, Ritmo. I've always been too busy doing things that I enjoy doing to worry about my identity.

Naturally the feminists would want the males to be vasectomized (irreversibly at puberty, if they could arrange it), with control over any frozen semen to be 100% in the hands of women at fertility clinics. Working exclusively with other women, they will decide what male traits are allowed to propagate. And when women want a fertile guy, they'll just have to look outside Western Civilization for one.

Here's to the hope you have that there will always be enough poverty in the third-world to satisfy your need for mail-order brides. May Tea Parties sprout up everywhere and choke off the growth of every nation! More mail-order brides for Shouty!

About those people who don't want children of their own to free themselves to work with lots of kids, they can do as they please, just as long as they don't use my kids for a paycheck or to indoctrinate them with antinatalist ideology. If they coercively force my children into their classroom, then they better not bitch about getting paid too little (it's about the love of children, right?) If they want to shape the next generation so badly, then they can go through the effort and bodily sacrifice and sleepless nights to grow their own offspring.

I wasted a few years of my life with a man who was antinatalist. Leaving him was the best thing that ever happened to me. He was not willing to give to me the gift of motherhood. Why should he and other antinatalists have any right to mold the minds of my children? Yes, I am advocating exclusion of antinatalists from public schools. Yes, only public schools because of the coercive nature of the system.

Althouse: "Do you think about yourself in terms of: what am I first?...I would say, if that's how you think, you have an identity problem, and you should integrate yourself into one person."

Althouse wins her own thread.

If I were any one thing "first", it would be a father, but then I'm not much of a father if I'm not also a good provider, which requires me to put my vocation first too; and I'm not much of a man if I'm not first and foremost a good husband.

...the cursus honorum leading to the Presidency has been getting shorter every election, from Bush I (VP, Ambassador, CIA chief, Congressman), to Clinton (Governor of Arkansas, 10 yrs), to Bush II (Governor of Texas, 5 yrs), to Obama (Editor of the Harvard Law Review). At the least, she seriously outclassed Obama.

Using that declination, Hillary's primary qualification was experience as First Lady. However, I agree that generally, qualification by experience for the office off POTUS has declined dramatically.

I'm sorry, but I can't find more class in her than I do in Obama, both a zero in my view. In the recent Benghazi incident she's proven as she can lie at Obama's level, too.

We must be at the tail-end of our great civilization. Both men and women dream of material, physical, and ego gratification. The progress to normalize behaviors which constitute evolutionary dysfunction is undeniable, when abortion of developing human life is considered a right, a majority of a population's women reproduce in the minority, and the father's role is marginalized and considered optional.

We are a civilization enjoying a decadent slumber. Awaiting the progress of generational suicide to cull our numbers. It seems the natural order can indeed by overridden through a conscious effort.

One of the most difficult parts of leading a life of action, and having had a wonderful father and fantastic women in my life, is having mercy on poor wretches like you who are literally turned inside out with jealousy.

The sad thing is that you don't know how much you will value being a mother until you become one. The feminists early on decided that a person's worth was measured by their paycheck which meant that being a mother had zero value in the feminist scheme of things. I think that most of the feminists who made that decision and shaped PC opinion for years to come did not have children and therefore were not in a position to objectively make that value judgment, which is sad. Women are finally fighting back on that. Community property should be a feminist's dream because a husband and wife own income equally regardless of whose name is on the paycheck and it, within the context of a marriage, places equal value on working outside the home and working at home, which is how I think it should be. Feminists in Wisconsin were very progressive in that regard and became a community property state in 1986 and it is sad that the feminists who placed zero value on being a mother and keeping the home controlled the agenda in other common law states.

Ritzy, I'll copy and save your last comment, and reply to it in about three years, after President Romney has had at about a year with majorities in both the house and senate, to repair the damage of the last four years of budget-less binge spending, venture-socialism, and generational theft.

You can pray for me, but I'll never go along with the idea that poverty is some kind of necessary virtue.

I'm not a materialist either - so I'm basically neutral in the materialism-poverty false choice. I'm like Switzerland.

Of course, I too admire women (or even men) who appreciate the value of hard work for its own sake. And I too appreciate the antidote that provides against excessive materialism - which is just as evil. I think Valenti and your late wife must have both realized this.

But I don't make the mistake of theologizing those things, either. Understanding their shortcomings may be basic components of a moral perspective, but so is reason in itself. There is no reason to worship either poverty or wealth. Just reason to condemn stances that atomize those things and dissociate them from the bigger ethical picture.

I never said they were superior. The primary difference between how leftists and righties view their opponents is that the right doesn't immediately assume that those who disagree with them are stupid (granted that assumption may change over time).

And the elephant in the room, dearest Ritmo, is that the Dems. controlled both houses of congress for 4 years (07-11) and the presidency since 08. They had overwhelming control over the federal govt. for 2 years (and filibuster proof control for just under one year).

The Reps. have only had control of one house.of Congress for less than 2 yrs, with everything they pass killed in the Dem. controlled senate.

If the primary obstacle to this economic miracle you talk about was the Republicans then shouldn't we have seen something before the Reps took the house?

The primary difference between how leftists and righties view their opponents is that the right doesn't immediately assume that those who disagree with them are stupid (granted that assumption may change over time).

How about just ignorant, in an immediately evident way, of the most utterly conventional economic wisdom? Namely, the fact that debt is a separate issue from economic growth?

Fathers are never expected to subsume their identity into parenthood the way that mothers are.

I disagree, but I also disagree with the underlying assumption that there's some idealized norm that defines an individual that is static throughout life, unchanging. No. Life present multiple paths that you must meander down, and each of those paths irretrievably changes you.

Valenti seems to think the destination is important, but it's not, it's the journey.

Legislation passed, Chris. But if you're another one of those guys who wants me to believe that the financial crisis didn't result from a structural issue, should have had no long-lasting effects, should be ignored so that we can be told to look in the other direction and fixate on spending, wasn't orders of magnitude worse than any typical recession, then there's not much discussion on that to be had.

Stay close to home can be a flexible concepts. For my husband and I, both of our parents worked within ten minutes from home. Today, my husband's commute is over an hour.

For those women who can have it all, many have husbands who are able to work from home 2-3 days out of the week.

I come from a background where women worked, but fortunately the factories were always in walking distance. Now offices are off highways... and where one works is not dependent if employment is in the town you live in.

O Ritmo Segundo said...If the Tea Party is so superior then where's all this awesome economic might they promised us?

There are times when I enjoy reading your comments. That's when you think for yourself. I may not agree with your conclusions etc, but I don't visit blogs because I want to read only what I agree with.

But when you shove logic and certain knowledge aside you start spouting the type of asinine talking points that lead to statements like this. That invariably indicates you're about to drive a thread into the ground and it's not worth reading any further.

The illusion is that women like Jessica value equality. Motherhood is the most egalitarian of all careers. No matter how rich or poor, how intelligent or lacking; all women are equals in motherhood. We all face the same challenges, trials, and tribulations, joys, and sorrows. The truth is, Jessica needs more than that, she craves power. Power is not egalitarian. Power is hierarchal. Power that would position her above others. That is perfectly acceptable, she just needs to start being honest.

It's amusing, and sad, to see leftists refuse to breed. Their 20% of the electorate shrinks; traditional America rebounds.

And who for a minute doesn't think Michelle is pandering with her "mom-in-chief" act? This is a First Lady with her own legislative program! And she managed to get her chief of staff inserted into a mayor's staff in order to cover up the graft there.

Republicans were very afraid of a Hillary presidency and Bill being back in the White House. I blame Rush and the Republican base for the last four years. They joked about Obama and I think they might have voted in some primaries.They made the great error of not taking Obama seriously and they assumed that his razor thin resume would get him laughed off the stage. Obama was able to link McCain with Bush and run on simply being half black. I honestly would have been okay with Bill and Hillary back in the white house, maybe that's because I'm no partisan.

Haha -- I originally typed EIC but then I couldn't remember if he had been Editor in Chief or not. Either way, I know he was also a state Senate backbencher for several years and a Senate backbencher for a couple years before becoming president. Was just exaggerating for effect.

Oh, if only Obama had had more time with filibuster-proof majorities...we'd probably be living in a socialist utopia.

No, Ritzy, debt has nothing at all to do with growth. The interest we pay on that debt? We get that money from the magic tree. And when interest rates go up (and in case you haven't noticed, there's no other direction for them to go) and that debt service burden triples or quadruples overnight, we'll just plant more magic money trees.

But actually you're right -- if you define economic growth in terms of devalued currency. If Obama is re-elected, in four years, we'll probably all make twice our current salaries. Unfortunately, the money will buy just one fourth what it once did.

But that GDP number will look great. And the government will reassure us that inflation is zero, and unemployment is 0.8%, even though the labor participation rate will be under 50%. Because shut up.

And you'll be here crowing about those awesome numbers, while those of us who aren't government employees rummage through dumpsters for sustenance. As long as you're first in line for the free soup and potato ration, the economy will look great to you.

We'll see what a recovery looks like after Romney gets his agenda passed by the Republican House and by the Senate, which will probably have a GOP majority.

What Romney is talking about with tax reform is what Reagan did in 1986. It led to a 15 years economic boom. If Bush had been smart enough to refuse to raise taxes and George Mitchell had been patriotic enough to avoid the filibuster stopping a capital gains tax cut, Bush would have had a second term and we would have had 30 years of economic growth. Clinton filled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with Democrat hacks like Raines and Gorelick. They gave us the real estate bubble.

I was waiting to see which variation of "We just didn't spend enough" you'd use.

Hey man. The only increased spending I'd like to see is these job creators spending to hire people. But you're already spending quite a bit as is, and would like to propose more, so that they can have less responsibility for paying down debt. So there you have it.

As for the government, Obama's reduced many billions from Medicaid, but Tea Party favorite Paul Ryan hates that.

And of course, we could stand to decrease the Pentagon's bloated budget by a heck of a lot.

But the Tea Party don't really like those things. They only like decreased government spending in the abstract, or if it can be shown to increase poverty or the burden on the poor.

We were just about to get the first woman President, so the time was ripe.

ADDED: Hillary Clinton would have been a better President. Where's the outrage about that?

Oh, NO! How the hell did I almost miss Althouse say this? I am outraged everyday. Where is your outrage? or is this it? But I will take it.

YES. Hillary Clinton would have been a better president. It would have been historical to show the world that we have come far in treating the women as equals. She would have made Obama VP and he could have coasted along for 4-8 years and then could have run and won. But no, he didn't want to wait. Screw him. The media and DNC had to cheat to put him in office.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to Ms. Valenti's views. My own children did not turn out well. It wasn't my fault. I beat them every chance I got and even on Christmas some years. But I was never able to instill a sense of discipline in them. They always remained rebillious and distrustful of authority. I don't blame them. I blame the mother. Perhaps if I had stayed home those first few years we would have had better luck with their upbinging. It seems to me that all that softness and coddling women offer their infants has deleterious effects later on. Why does it take so much longer to potty train a child than to housebreak a puppy? Excessive coddling that's why?....Let the women go out and work and the men stay home. We'll soon see a more disciplined and orderly race of humans. Now, I know some of you are going to mention Anna Wintour, but that's the exception that proves the rule.

Pasta-Barbarian, a veritable poster child for un-seriousness, does battle with the magical debt-interest payment tree by inventing a magical inflation tree.

So he tilted that windmill in an extra-special way, by inventing sky-high inflation where none exists.

With a sense of hyperbole and fantasy that active, it's worth assuming that nothing he says is worth taking seriously.

And yet, he promotes himself here as a poster child for business owners everywhere.

Either those business owners would do well to disavow him, hang their heads in shame, or admit that his nonsense (which is unfortunately characteristic) is the reason that their demands aren't being taken seriously by this country's population anymore.

Clinton filled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with Democrat hacks like Raines and Gorelick. They gave us the real estate bubble.

Good point, Michael K.! And don't forget how Clinton got that bargain by repealing Glass-Steagall and agreeing to work with the conservative whizbangs behind that whole deregulatory mess to make sure that the mortgages could be packaged as toxic financial assets for their johns in the financial industry! What an awesomely virtuous cycle that was! Oh hell, those were the days, were they not?

But of course, a Democrat's name (Hillary's husband's) is in there along with the rest of this mess so that you can make it all clean and neat and tidy and surgically excise the massive conservative Republican wealth-obsessed contribution like it just never existed. You're so clever that way!

I didn't choose motherhood, it chose me. Once that door to being a parent was opened it seemed the most natural thing in the world. I never felt that my job trumped my role as mother, and many times wished I had the option of staying home and being a full time parent.

As for being dehumanized for choosing to put motherhood first, it's happened only once, here on this blog, when a commenter called me a breeder. No woman, either conservative or ultra liberal ever demeaned me for having four children and putting them first.

As a father who was a stay at home father and now a single working parent with a daughter staying with me 100% of the time, I am terribly offended by Valenti's sexist remarks. Personally, I have found parenting to be the most rewarding part of my life. Indeed, the primary I strive to excel in my job is to better provide for my kids.

If you don't like kids all that much, fine. Face that reality and don't try to affirm your beliefs by forcing to agree with you be be like you. Typical fascist liberal.

Jessica Valenti needs to spend a little time doing something for someone else. She's got a self-absorption problem, not an identity problem. It would be a very good thing for posterity if women who think like she does didn't have children. Let that emptiness of soul die out. But, at the very least she should have the decency to make herself barren not some unfortunate man she manages to coerce.

"Sorry kid I missed your 3rd birthday. But like I'v been telling you ever since you were 6 mo. old, you are not the most important thing in my life. Now shut up. I gotta go and write a soap commercial. So don't bother me!"

You ought to be a little more circumspect. There is a fellow who comes around here from time to time, who love to throw "breeder" around as an insult. (He's not honorable enough to rectify his own breeder-mother's mistake in bearing him, but let's let that pass for now.) I don't recall the incident myself, but it's perfectly plausible that he did call Inga a "breeder".

So tie the two threads together.Whether it's being president or being a mother or father the cursus keeps getting shorter. They keep saying you need to know less and less to do complex jobs. Why? Because the job is described in simple and demeaning ways. A mother is cleaning house, not making a home; she babysits brats, she used to raise her children. The President is the puppet of unknown malignant forces; he used to lead a free people. Xmas is about shopping; Christmas used to be about Christ. This whole attitude which wrecks by demeaning isn't really liberalism; it is what liberalism has become. It is a mental malignancy which became a social movement in the Sixties and is strong on the Coasts. It doesn't work but for that reason it does destroy. Like Obama.

"Nomennovum, You ought to be a little more circumspect. There is a fellow who comes around here from time to time, who love to throw "breeder" around as an insult."

That was not the lie I was referring to. The lie is that it was "de-humanizing."

It's typical hyper-hyperbole bullshit. As much as calling me a dumbshit is "dehumanizing." It's meaningless. Inga has not been dehumaized. Death is being dehumanized. Many things short of anything that has ever occurred to Inga/Allie might be dehumanizing. Being called names is not.

I don't know why the Jessica Valentis of the world are seen as some kind of tastemakers or anyone worth listening to.

Yes, the average Joe in this country or around the world is going to deny a million years of evolution and decline to reproduce so they can march bravely into the future and claim a birthright to work at some meaningless middle management job (or writing absurd speculative essays that hardly anyone reads) unencumbered by squalling brats at home.

A guy holding a machete over his head ready to strike, someone who goes out of his way, when he wasn't even addressed directly, to question another commenter's truthfulness, hmmmm, yet he has the gonads to say someone else is being melodramatic?

"And don't leave out that she can get an abortion, without ever mentioning she was pregnant to her husband, as it would be a decision between she and her doctor."

That's a reason to get a vasectomy, to disconnect yourself from the world of abortion."

That's a bit of a non sequitur when the discussion concerned the woman asking the man to get a vasectomy for HER reasons and then maybe changing her mind and finding a guy who is intact. That leaves the guy without the chance to have a child.

Of course a guy that stupid might be better off not reproducing.

I just enjoy the "Roe effect" where the lefties die out. Even Woody Allen knows that 80% of success in life is just showing up.

"Breeder hips": women wear clothing that accentuates their hips while minimizing their waists.

"Nice tits": woman do whatever it takes to accentuate them.

"Nice p****": Women ... in addition to grooming them, making them smell nice, bleaching them an otherwise surgically altering them to make them more pleasant to look at, never seem to tire of taliking about them.

I agree with Inga, breeder is not used as a compliment. It is often used by antinatalists as a smear against those who commit the great sin of... gasp... reproducing, overpopulating the Earth. I am not kidding, these people really think reproduction is an environmental sin, which of course is the ultimate sin. What could be more important than saving the big rock from, um, dying. Oh right, rocks can't die because they are not alive, but don't be fooled, it is more important than all else. Especially more important than all those pesky babies that should have been aborted by their breeder moms. Ask John Holdren, he'll explain it. Save the Earth, have an abortion.

There is room for everyone in this world whether they love or hate babies. The most important thing is not to get stuck in a mismatched relationship. A man or a women who truly wants to have children should leave a partner if they do not want the same, rather than having a vasectomy or tubal ligation. Don't be afraid to ask on a first date how your date feels about having children. If that desire is deep in your heart, and they say that they never want children, run! Tell them you are going to get the popcorn refilled and leave. It is that big of a deal. Some things are uncompromisable.

Althouse: "Do you think about yourself in terms of: what am I first?...I would say, if that's how you think, you have an identity problem, and you should integrate yourself into one person."

I think of myself in the context of what I am occupied with at the time. If/when at work, I think of myself as a professional financial adviser. If I were to get a call from my husband, I am a wife. If from my child, the mother role.

We can be multitudes of people all rolled into one. The "person" I am is the one that is required by the situation at the time.

To do otherwise....pick one role, one part and exclude the rest of your life is insanity.

Perhaps we should segregate into separate societies, natalists and antinatalists (by antinatalist I mean those who actively choose not to reproduce). They have every right to exist, but they are not entitled to positions that are compulsory in shaping the hearts and minds of other people's children.

NoNo, let's just ask women here if being called a breeder is a compliment? Is it the same as calling a man a stud?

Nope. Not the same at all. Quite often people in the gay community will also derisively and with sneering curled lip call both the husbands and wives in a family with children....breeders. It is an insult, or so they think.

RE: Vasectomy for the man. I think that is a horrible idea to force someone to make an irreversible physical decision. One that they may regret years later and for which they might have submerged resentment.

When I started dating my husband, 20 years ago, we were both in our early 40's. I had a tubal ligation because at 40+ and divorced, I knew that I didn't want to bear more children. However, we were just getting serious and I felt obligated to be honest and let him know that if we continued there would not be any children. A man at age 40 is still of an age where he might desire a family and I didn't want him to lose that opportunity if it was something he wanted. Awkward conversation....but as it turned out, he was not interested in fatherhood. (although I think he would have been a great father...he is wonderful with kids and they love him back.)

A man or a women who truly wants to have children should leave a partner if they do not want the same,

Absolutely! Honesty and respect for the wishes of the other person. How else can you have a relationship if one person is dictating the rules.

A parent should have a right to remove their child from the classroom if they find out the teacher has antinatalist views. We don't allow racists to teach our children, why should we allow those who hate families and undermine our values teach our children?

"Quite often people in the gay community will also derisively and with sneering curled lip call both the husbands and wives in a family with children....breeders. It is an insult, or so they think." - DBQ

Dust Bunny Queen- I can tell you first hand that you are right about the resentment. I was not sterilized, thank God, but I feel like I lost those years of my life because I was not honest with myself and buried my deepest desires. Thankfully all is well now, though I still carry some scars which mostly manifests as resentment towards antnatalists in general. Just as long as they stay away from my children.

Inga- I am not sure, my children are not yet in school. However, considering ALL children come from people who chose giving life, I see any antinatalist ideology in schools as an agenda that undermines the values of every family. They are not entitled to use other people's children. My ex was an antinatalist, if he wanted to shape the future generation, then he should have manned up and taken on fatherhood. He chose to withold that gift, so he and others like him are not entitled to mold my children with their ideology.

"That was not the lie I was referring to. The lie is that it was 'de-humanizing.'"

Then you're guilty of misusing the term "lie", then, since whether-or-not someone called her a breeder is a matter of fact, whereas whether or not a particular slur is dehumanizing or not is clearly a matter of opinion. I was paying you the compliment of having clear ideas about these two concepts, when it never occurred to me that you would be using "lie" of something in the latter category.

See, this is why I like living in Texas. It's entirely acceptable to tell school administration that you want a Christian teacher for your child, and get one. Poof, no lectures on how human beings are a mold upon the face of Gaia that must be exterminated.

Rustling Leaves, you remind me of my youngest daughter who just got married last month. She was in a 5 year relationship with a guy who hemmed and hawed about marriage and children until he one day was honest and finally stated he didn't want either. To my daughter's credit, because that was not the future she envisioned for herself, dumped him that day.

Later that same year she met the man she married. It was on a second or third date that she had that conversation with him, the one about, "not getting any younger, I want marriage and children, are you on board? If not, let's not waste each others time". When she told me she just came out and told him that, I said" you did what?!"

Well he was in agreement and they are working on starting a family, as she and he are both 32 years old. No time to waste.

From reading our school's newletters and website, I anticipate the need for intense countereducation. Our school seems to be loaded with political corectness. grievence studies, population control and save Gaia bullshit.

RL, come on down. We are from the Seattle area originally and the difference is night and day, and we will never leave now. Just avoid Austin and its environs as the blue-staters discovered it a while back and are doing their level best to pull a Colorado (colonize and ruin, in other words).

Thank you Erika! A few days ago she called me and said, "guess what Mom", I yelled, "you're pregnant!" she laughed and said, "no, we have three mice in the house". I am the mouse killer expert, as I live in front of a nature preserve and behind a lake, all sorts of critters seem to want in before winter.

Inga- good for your daughter for listening to her heart. I know a few women (I am sure there are men too I just don't know them) who want children but keep waiting and waiting for their partner to change. Being honest with your mate and being honest with yourself is so important. I am so thankful for the three beautiful gifts that my husband gave to me. That beats diamonds or gold hands down. It takes a leap of faith, but in my opinion being single for life would be better than being tied down to a man who is not in tune to your deepest hearts desires. Maybe God hears these whispers when you find them and own them. Sometimes you have to leave something behind so that new doors can open up.

Erika says:See, this is why I like living in Texas. It's entirely acceptable to tell school administration that you want a Christian teacher for your child, and get one. Poof, no lectures on how human beings are a mold upon the face of Gaia that must be exterminated.

Funny, I've lived in Texas for all but a few years of my life and I've never heard of there being an epidemic of public school teachers telling kids that human beings are a mold upon the face of Gaia that must be exterminated. I've also never heard of it being acceptable for people to be able to tell their public school administrators that they only want Christian teachers (no Jews, agnostics, Hindus or Muslims, please - and we're still a little unsure about the Catholics!) to teach their children. But maybe that's because I always went to private schools and I live in a better part of Texas than Erika.

And based on comments like the one from furious_a at 12:43pm and others here, it appears that some commenters are unable to tell the difference between what Valenti said in her article and what people who commented on her article said. Even when Althouse mentions that the comment furious_a is attributing to Valenti is "one of the early comments on an article over at The Nation, by Jessica Valenti". Funny how that works.

Actually, it takes no effort on my part to avoid being a jackass; how much effort are you putting in to being one?

This while misuse of "lie" is (to quote one of our current national meatheads) "a big f'n deal", I imagine because to lie--i.e. to deliberately tell a falsehood--is considered more reprehensible than simply being mistaken or having a difference of opinion. I think all Americans of good will should push back against the misuse of "lie" when all the speaker really has is that they disagree with what the other person has said.

"To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes, and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? …a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.”

I suggest, Kirk, you stick to your good works and save the didactics for the children. I made my point clear once, so I have no need to further justify my comment, which was made to another commenter, to you.